I quite agree with Crowhugger, speak to your accountant before you buy any accounting package, because it could save you fees if the accounting data you prepare can be imported from a backup into your accountant's system, which takes a few minutes, without any need for manual input - which can take hours.

That said, if your accountant is of the old school where accounts are still prepared on pieces of paper - they are still out there!! - then excel spreadsheets should be fine, and you can of course tailor them to provide all the information you need. You might even find a free downloadable Excel bookkeeping system on the internet.

The important thing to remember is to backup daily, to a flash drive so that if your computer goes down your accounting records are still available.

TAS Books is very good but not cheap to buy once the trial period is over, although the support people are pretty good.

I personally dread receiving records on Quickbooks.